Hospital- and Home-Based Palliative Care in Vietnam: Better care for patients
12th June 2023
Hospital-based palliative care linked to palliative home care is rarely accessible in low- and middle-income countries. Researchers set out to study people-centred outcomes of a palliative home care team based at a major cancer centre in Vietnam.
The palliative home care team, consisting of at least one physician and one nurse, provided home palliative care when needed by patients of the cancer centre who lived within 10 kilometres. A linguistically validated version of the Palliative care Outcome Scale (POS) was integrated into standard clinical data collection.
The researchers retrospectively reviewed data from 81 consecutive patients on prevalence and severity of pain and other types of physical, psycho-social, and spiritual suffering at the first home visit (baseline) and at the first follow-up visit and measured any differences.
Results showed that there was great demand for palliative home care. From baseline to follow-up, there was significant improvement in pain regardless of the baseline severity of pain. Among patients with severe pain, breathlessness, nausea/vomiting, diarrhoea, depression, or worry about illness at baseline, there was significant improvement and caregiver worry about the patient also improved significantly.
The researchers concluded that the integration of hospital- and home-based palliative care for cancer patients is feasible and improves people-centred outcomes at low cost in Vietnam. These data suggest that benefits to patients, their families, and the health care system can accrue from integration of palliative care at all levels in Vietnam and other low- and middle-income countries.
Nguyen V, Khanh QT, Hocaoglu M, Huyen HTM, Thinh DHQ, Krakauer EL. Integrated Hospital- and Home-Based Palliative Care for Cancer Patients in Vietnam: People-Centered Outcomes. J Pain Symptom Manage. 2023 Apr 28:S0885-3924(23)00456-6. doi: 10.1016/j.jpainsymman.2023.04.016. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37119878.